A Quote by Dan Chaon

A lot of time, with stories, I'll start out with a title and try to dream myself into the story that it evokes - a kind of subconscious exercise in which I'm trawling for some kind of entryway into fiction.
When I start to write, I see my stories as a kind of movie. For instance, I ask myself, "What kind of opening do I want for this book?"
For me, clothing is nothing without the story behind it. Everything I own evokes some kind of memory.
We need to have more women founders stepping up to kind of own their own story and ask for what they want and tell success stories and start really building confidence that these stories are out there.
I play piano and guitar and I do write my own stuff so to a certain extent I know what I want to do in regards to music. But I'm still finding out what kind of music is my favourite kind to listen to, never mind do myself so I've got a lot of time to find out myself and develop myself as an artist.
Any time I put together a story collection, I don't know what it's going to look like overall - or even what the title story is going to be. Over time, I end up with a dozen or so stories, and I start to see a shape to them, how they fit together, and then I write stories that complement or extend that shape.
The thing is that my first novel, which was basically a mystery adventure story, won quite an important award in Spain for young adult fiction, and because of this it became a very successful book, and right now it's some sort of a standard title, it's read widely in many high schools in Spain, so I think, in a way, I was a victim of my own success in the field of young adult fiction, because it was never my own natural register. I never intended to write that kind of fiction, but I became very successful at it.
I think fantasy is best described as a kind of fiction that evokes wonder, mystery or magic, a sense of possibility beyond the ordinary world in which we live, and yet which reflects and comments upon that known world.
I'm kind of calling for a - I'm not the only one - you know, a revolution of some kind where we try to take back the web or start something new because, you know, the dominant medium of our time is in a desperate state and it doesn't have to be like that.
I am not indifferent to the appreciation of kind people. [The voters were] extremely kind in naming me the world's top public intellectual, a title to which I can never see myself as entitled.
We're trying to learn from [Olympic] Beijing, which could be very intimidating. We've learned to expect it's power, it majesty and that it completes a cycle of certain types of shows... I don't think any nation could do anything on that scale. We haven't got that money, and I don't think anybody would have the appetite for that kind of expenditure and that kind of control, so we're going to try and do something a bit more intimate and try and start again... start a new cycle for these kind of ceremonies.
I try very hard to tell stories and not lecture. I try to approach things as an amateur and not an expert, so that when I'm doing something, I'm starting out in a place a lot like where my readers start out - which is to say, naïve.
And it's a big honor to be fighting for the title and to put a Mexican-American on top of the heavyweight division. I can give a lot of people some kind of inspiration by winning this title.
I worked out a book which I thought was just straight science fiction -- with everything pretty much explained, and suddenly I got an idea which I thought was kind of neat for working in a mythological angle. I'm really struggling with myself. It would probably be a better book if I include it, but on the other hand I don't always like to keep reverting to it. I think what I'm going to do is vary my output, do some straight science fiction and some straight fantasy that doesn't involve mythology, and composites.
I can be very snobby about fiction, especially contemporary fiction. I can be kind of overly demanding, I think. But this is, I think, a good time. A lot of fiction comes out right now. So, I like reading the memoir. I love memoir, the biography, auto bio.
I found myself sitting at the computer, and I thought I was going to write a kind of simple nostalgic story about two boys and their love of kite fighting. But stories have a will of their own, and this one turned out to be this dark tale about betrayal, loss, regret. The short story which was about 25 pages long sat around for a couple of years.
Believe it or not, there are some things that I have written that would be kind of a dream to make. Hopefully, I will get to finance them... There is something that I wrote called 'Demon's Flare' which would kind of be a dream come true.
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